Tulasi Janjrukia
Machine Control Design Project: Elevator
Our goal was to create a residential elevator that can go between three floors in any combination. The elevator has to have three buttons that represent each floor. Each floor has to have a call button that brings the elevator to that floor, and each floor has to have three lights that represent the different floors. The lights are expected to indicate where the elevator is currently located. For safety, the elevator must return to the ground floor after a specific amount of time.
Design Brief
Concept Generation
Before we started, we looked up pictures of similar projects to help us think. When we first began brainstorming ideas for the elevator, all of our design ideas ended up being very similar. The main difference was where the elevator was located in relation to the floors. We had a hard time coming up with the flow charts for the code.
Concept Selection
Modifications
Final Design
Results
Conclusion
We ended up choosing Katie's idea through the design matrix. Her solution best fit the criteria we chose, and it seemed the most efficient.
One modification we had to make was tying the rope through one of the holes on the side of the winch spool instead of the center hole. We chose to make this modification because the the rope would stack on top of each other as the elevator went up, changing the values as we were testing.
Hardware:
motor: Used to power the elevator
Drive shafts: We used a drive shaft to connect the motor to the opposing wall.
Channels: We used channels as floor two and three, the two walls, and also as the elevator
Winch spool/ rope: We used the winch spool and rope to move the elevator cart to each floor.
Base plate: Served as the floor
LEDs: Used to signal the elevator's position
Bump switch: Used as call buttons on each floor, and as the elevator buttons
Adjusters: Used to hold the LED's in place and keep them upright
Motor controller: to connect the motor to the cortex
Software:
Our machine worked, but it depended on whether we had a fully charged battery that day or not. We remained under budget, spending only $8,580 of the allotted $20,000.
Overall, the elevator mechanism was functional, but it some days were better than others. We realized that depending on the level of charge of the battery we had that day, the times we had would change, so it would skew the other measurements. If we were to do this again, we would spend less time building and more time coding the elevator.
Click here to view the code
